Journal of Teacher Education

In this study, we document pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) opportunities to learn about planning for equitable and ambitious instruction during clinical placements. We also test whether these opportunities vary by the level of participants’ perceived congruence between the vision of science teaching supported in their university coursework and the instructional practices and learning culture of their host classrooms. We analyzed interview and survey responses of 65 science PSTs from three preparation programs which required their novices to learn about planning and teaching that was consistent with research-based reforms. In placements where novices could participate in planning practices that were perceived as congruent with these reform-based visions, they were more likely than peers in low-congruence classrooms to engage in educative co-planning with a mentor, to take up responsibilities for planning lessons earlier in the school year and for longer periods of time, and to receive useful feedback from mentors.

The present study is a narrative analysis of 14 self-created books by Latina/o/x bilingual preservice teachers to describe their biliteracy trajectories. Drawing on the concept of identity and bilingualism, this analysis explores how preservice teachers experienced language and literacy and how these experiences have shaped their bilingual–biliterate identities. The findings of this research study revealed that bilingual preservice teachers (a) narrated Spanish as a significant part of their remembered identities, (b) struggled to maintain their bilingualism and biliteracy, and (c) reconnected and reclaimed their bilingual–biliterate identities through their experiences in their teacher preparation program.

This study investigated how taking different perspectives in teacher training courses influences the learning of professional vision, multiperspectivity, and strategic knowledge of classroom management. A total of 134 student teachers analyzed classroom management from one of three different perspectives: 36, from an observer perspective by viewing videos of unknown teachers (TG-V); 46, from only a protagonist perspective by remembering own teaching (TG-T); and 52, from both a protagonist and an observer perspective through videos of their own, their peers, and unknown teaching (TG-VT). An untreated control group (CG) received no classroom management training. Learning gains were investigated in a quasi-experimental pre–post–follow-up design using a mixed-methods approach. Results showed that all interventions fostered strategic knowledge of classroom management. Analyzing videos from own and unknown teachers (TG-VT) had the strongest positive effect on professional vision, but analyzing own teaching from memory also had higher effects on professional vision and multiperspectivity than analyzing stock videos.

The purpose of this study was to investigate changes in a cohort of secondary preservice teachers’ (PSTs) vision of the role of a teacher within the context of a mathematics methods course designed around pedagogies of practice. We analyzed data collected in the first and last 2 weeks of the course, consisting of recordings of small- and whole-group discussions, PSTs’ written work, and individual interviews. We first coded using Munter’s Role of Teacher rubric and identified significant differences between beginning-of-semester data and end-of-semester data. We then conducted three rounds of constant comparative analysis resulting in four themes that describe the changes in visions of role of teacher. Findings indicate that engaging in pedagogies of practice in preservice education has the potential to influence PSTs’ visions of their role as mathematics teachers. This study extends both the literatures on pedagogies of practice and on teachers’ instructional vision.

The Core Practices Movement (CPM) and Social Justice Teacher Education (SJTE) represent two communities of practice within which novices develop as professional educators. However, there is little dialogue about how they might collaborate to develop novice social justice educators, and the critiques and recommendations that do cross movements originate from divergent theoretical starting points. Possibilities for convergence within the learning theories that underpin CPM and SJTE are explored, examining how social learning theories might be infused with, and enveloped within, critical learning theories. This article thus re-presents teacher education as a “community of praxis.” Within each of its three hybrid dimensions—a shared repertoire of practice/praxis, mutual engagement of vertical and horizontal expertise, and joint enterprise of professional and political aims—possibilities for developing novice social justice educators are described, and tensions at the intersection of justice and practice in teacher education are explored.

One influential way of thinking about teaching is to conceive of it as a clinical profession, similar in important ways to medicine. However, fundamental differences between doctors’ and teachers’ practice limit the usefulness of the medical model. How can we adapt our understandings of clinical practice in light of the unique aspects of teaching and the context of teachers’ work? In this article, we explore the requirements of the central clinical activities of diagnosis, treatment, and inference in teaching; how teachers tend to perform them; and how their performance is shaped by the context of teachers’ work. We elaborate each clinical activity’s characteristics and explore the unique features and limitations of teaching in relation to it. To account for teaching’s unique qualities, we propose adapting the clinical acts of diagnosis, treatment, and inference to include, respectively, prioritization and noticing, disciplined improvisation, and room to maneuver.

This study examined factors linked to novice general education teachers’ perception of their preparedness to work with multilingual learners in the classroom. Using a multilevel modeling approach, we examined factors at the teacher and school levels using two AY 2015 to 2016 datasets: The National Teacher and Principal Survey from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Civil Rights Data Collection from the Office of Civil Rights. The results show that teacher perception of preparedness was positively associated with teacher education courses on working with multilingual learners, supports received during the first-year teaching, and the number of multilingual learners teachers worked within their classrooms. Similarly, the concentration of multilingual learners at the school level had a positive impact on preparedness. Overall, it appears that experiences both learning about and working with multilingual learners are positively associated with novice general education teachers’ perceptions of preparedness to work with multilingual students.